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The national unemployment rates gets lots of attention, and
lately more attention has been paid to the workforce
participation rate since more Americans have given up looking for
a job, but we can also see that an astounding 100 million
Americans don’t have jobs.

Specifically, these are people who are part of the civilian
over-16 non-institutional population who are either unemployed or
not part of the workforce. According to the April jobs report,
the number of jobless American stood at 100.9 million.

That’s an all-time record and it’s an increase of 26.2 million
over the last 12 years. It’s as if we absorbed the entire adult
population of Canada and not a single person had a job.

The numbers are staggering. The jobs-to-population ratio peaked
12 years ago. If we were to have the same ratio today, we would
need 15.3 million more jobs, or 23.7 million fewer people.

(Note: The chart above is the Civilian Over-16 Non-Institutional
Population minus the seasonally adjusted Civilian Workforce.)